


The Fires of Mercury

by MrToddWilkins



Series: To the Planets Beyond [1]
Category: Marooned (1969), Rocket’s Red Glare (2000), Space Explorers RPF, Sweet Valley High - Francine Pascal, Sweet Valley Twins - Francine Pascal
Genre: 1999, told through poetry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:40:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29474115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrToddWilkins/pseuds/MrToddWilkins
Summary: It was supposed to be a routine Shuttle mission - featuring the latest civilian in space,experiments in the latest zero-g science,and a daring spacewalk. But meteors crippled the Space Shuttle Advance,leaving it feared unable to return to Earth. Into this gap stepped Archie Miller,maker of model rockets. For his sister Amanda was co-pilot on this mission,and he would do anything to save her. Archie rode into space to save her and her crewmates,riding the fires of Mercury,to save a girl (in his mind) as pretty as Venus.
Series: To the Planets Beyond [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2186409





	1. Epigraph

Over the altar, flame of anatomized fire,  
the High Prince stood, gyre in burning gyre;  
day level before him, night massed behind;  
the Table ascended; the glories intertwined.

\- Charles Williams, Taliessin through Logres


	2. The Man in Vandenberg

Talaat ibn Kula of Ispahan  
taught me the measurement of man  
that Euclid and Archimedes showed,  
ere I took the Western road

\- CW

In the early spring,the year 1999,the last year of the twentieth century,if you had by night passed a certain bar in Lompoc,California,then you would have heard the tinkly sound of a ‘20s-style piano,and its operator playing an old popular song. _Mandy_ was the name of the song,and the piano man,just barely out of high school,had chosen it for the night’s entertainment because it shared a name with his sister. Archibald James (AJ) Miller was not a man for subtlety.


End file.
